The King's Grace (68 page)

The hours dragged by, and before the bell rang for Compline, Grace heard the agonized cry of a woman who has surely lost her child. She picked up her skirts, ran to the nursery and flung open the door. Taking in the scene, she gently pulled the distraught Cecily off Lilleth’s body, now lying peaceful and cool beneath the soiled covers. The priest had been sent for at supper, and he had given the comatose child her last rites. Now he carefully covered the lifeless face with the sheet and led those present in prayer. On their knees, Grace felt Cecily’s body leaning against her and prayed that her sister would do the same for her when the time came—as it surely must.

Whether Doctor Rollins’s bleeding came early enough for Bella, or whether Bella did not contract so virulent a form of the disease, the sisters did not know, but Grace’s pleas to God for mercy were heard and the little girl pulled through. Her body was covered with a rosy rash after the second day of fever, and she had bouts of nausea and flux, but she had no spasms and by the third day her fever lessened and her breathing improved.

Once Bella was out of danger, Grace stood with Cecily on the steps of the rambling manor house as the steward and some of the male retainers accompanied Elizabeth Welles’s small coffin to the village church for burial. Grace’s unborn child moved in her womb, and she was reminded again that the circle of life was forever turning.

C
ECILY’S DUTY WAS
to mourn with her husband, so she shared the journey to London with Grace, who was to resume her position in Bess’s train at Greenwich until her own lying-in. Leaving Pasmer’s Place after resting for one night, Grace and Bella were accompanied to Greenwich by Tom in a hired boat.

“I am glad to leave the house, in truth,” Tom told Grace as she enjoyed his protective arm and the fur-lined cloak around her. “Lord John was not himself these past two days. He was ill-tempered and complained of aching muscles and a headache. He took the death of his daughter hard, and you should know ’tis not only ladies who cry, Grace. The viscount’s red eyes gave away his grief, and I suspect his humors became unbalanced. Too much of the black bile causing melancholy, I suspect.”

Grace listened idly, gazing at the faraway tower of Bermondsey Abbey to the south and remembering her hour with John on the riverbank after Stoke. She thought she recognized the spot and sighed.

“Was that little sigh for his lordship, Grace?” Tom teased her. “Daydreaming again?”

Grace started. ’Twas what John had said to her the first time they talked alone, on the ramparts of Sheriff Hutton. The day came rushing back with all its youthful fantasies, but with it came the memory of John calling: “Tom! Tom Gower. I pray you go with me,” and of her taking note of Tom for the first time. A soft smile curved her mouth. “I was thinking how much I love being with you, Tom Gower,” she replied, and although it was not exactly what she had been thinking, the sentiment was true.

To the left of them, the Tower rose white against the bright blue winter sky, and Grace shivered. She could see the window of her cousin of Warwick’s room in the Byward Tower and wondered where Perkin was imprisoned. Somewhere less comfortable than Ned’s apartment, where he would be forgotten, she guessed. She asked Tom if anything more had been heard of Perkin since his appearance before the bishop of Cambrai six months earlier, and Tom shrugged. “Not a peep,” he said, “and I pray you are not—”

“Nay,” she interrupted, taking a deep breath. “You need have no more worry on that score, husband.” And, snuggling closer to him, she repeated what she had told Cecily.

“Praise be to God,” Tom muttered. “I am sorry for you, Grace. You had your heart set on finding your brother, but ’tis a relief to know we may put this behind us now.” He kissed the top of her bowed head and knew a peace he had not dreamed of during these years of turmoil when John and Perkin had intruded on their lives.

T
HEY HAD NOT
been more than half a day at Greenwich when Tom recognized the viscount’s lawyer, John Cutler, hurrying towards the palace from the wharf. He frowned as he watched from one of the smaller ante-chambers in the king’s lodgings and made his way closer to the audience chamber. Thus he was able to hear as the man breathlessly told the king that his well-beloved stepuncle, John, Viscount Welles, was dead. All the color drained from Tom’s face. How could his master have met his Maker so quickly? He remembered the testiness, the complaints about aching back and legs and the persistent dry cough. Surely ’twas not enough to kill a man of the viscount’s strength?

But it was, and when Cecily heard the news, she went into shock. She took to her bed, and Grace watched over her for days. Bess was already lying-in, and she demanded a report on her sister every hour from her prone position on the curtained bed in her shuttered room. The royal physicians and astrologers looked grave, hoping these were not bad omens for the baby Bess was about to deliver. “’Tis not an auspicious beginning to a royal life,” Henry’s astrologer, William Parron, told him. “If Lady Welles herself should die, then it would be an especially ill-fated time for the queen to give birth.”

Henry had finally lost his temper with his soothsayer. “What is the queen supposed to do, you addlepate, unconceive the child?”

All honor had been accorded John, Viscount Welles, and no expense spared to convey him in a long procession to his last resting place in Westminster Abbey, where his body lay in state while monks and abbots said Masses for his soul for a night and a day. Grace could not help but compare all this pomp and ceremony to the paltry arrangements Henry had made for his mother-in-law, who had once worn the crown of England.

T
HE FIRST PERSON
to greet Grace upon her return to court was Katherine Gordon. She was watching from her perch in the window seat of the long hall and pounced on her friend as soon as Grace entered. Grace bit her tongue; she did not know when or if she would ever tell Katherine of her change of heart, although during the journey back from Hellowe, Cecily had come to the same conclusion as Grace: Katherine knew her husband was not Richard. Grace noted that Katherine had filled out and lost the haunted look in her eyes and was cheered.

“I have had a letter from Richard,” Katherine whispered, taking Grace’s arm and leading her away from the others. With Bess confined to her chamber, her attendants were somewhat aimless between shifts of sitting with the queen, and were playing music, cards or fox and geese, and some of the younger ones were flirting outrageously with blushing squires and pages. Where is Lady Margaret? Grace wondered, looking about her. Ah, there she was, conversing with Grace’s half sister Catherine Courtenay, countess of Devon. It was one of those times when she was thankful for her lack of inches, so she could hide herself behind the wide sleeves of other attendants.

“How wonderful for you, Katherine,” Grace enthused. “Are his spirits good, despite his circumstance?”

“He says that I may visit him due to his good behavior.” Katherine’s eyes shone, and Grace was struck once again by the Scotswoman’s extraordinary beauty. “Certes, I have to be attended when I am in the room with him, and no doubt there will be guards outside, but I can see him! The king is allowing it; he is so kind. Oh, Grace, please will you go with me?”

Grace’s face fell. “I cannot leave court again so soon, Katherine. And
I shall be lying-in within a few weeks. Maybe my sister Catherine can accompany you.”

Katherine made a face. “The countess does not care for me, I can tell. I shall wait until you are ready.” She gave a wry grin. “In truth, Richard is not going anywhere, is he?”

S
URROUNDED BY TWO
dozen people, including the king and his mother, attendants, physicians and midwives, Queen Elizabeth gave birth to a son at the gray dawn on the twenty-first day of February. It had not been an easy birth, and the physicians had shaken their heads at the sanguine temperament of the baby after such long labor distress, while the astrologers had consulted the stars and their charts and muttered predictions for the child born under the sign of the fishes. The royal couple named the baby Edmund, and although Henry meant to honor his father, the queen and her sisters knew it was to honor their Uncle Edmund who had been cruelly killed at Wakefield the same day as their grandfather, Richard, duke of York.

Not three weeks later, in a smaller chamber not far from Bess’s, Grace went into labor. Enid hardly had time to hurry Susannah and Bella back to the nursery and fetch the midwife before the Gowers’ third daughter slipped easily into practiced hands and cried lustily to be wrapped and held in her mother’s arms. Tom was delighted with the child, and even more pleased when Grace told him she would like to call her Alice, after his mother. Watching his daughter trying to squirm free of her swaddling bands, he chuckled. “She is as busy as my mother, in truth.” He bent and kissed his wife tenderly, taking her hand and holding it to his cheek. “I am so proud to be your husband, Grace. God and his saints smiled on me when you were sent to Sheriff Hutton.”

Grace nodded and smiled but said nothing. Her tired body needed rest, and she closed her eyes. As she did whenever Sheriff Hutton was mentioned, she thought of John. But now she thought of the injustice of his death and how he, like Perkin, had been manipulated by the woman both looked upon as their aunt. How odd, she mused, that all three of us have been used by powerful women, but none so dreadfully as poor Perkin. She drifted off into sleep and dreamed of Perkin climbing a ladder, his face pale with fear and the sound of men jeering all around him.

T
HE TWO WET
nurses chattered away as their charges nuzzled at the full breasts offered them, and Bess and Grace could not help but entwine hands as they watched their new offspring share a feeding moment.

“Your Alice is beautiful,” Bess said, admiring the fine dark hair and chubby cheeks. “She is as strong as an ox. See how she kicks as she suckles. She will be a handful, Grace.”

Grace chuckled. Alice was indeed giving the wet nurse’s stomach a drubbing, but the young woman did not seem to mind and grinned up at the queen. She looked at baby Edmund, whose placid stare at nothing in particular accompanied a lackluster attempt at sucking, and Bess clucked her concern.

“Eat well, sweeting,” she murmured, bending down and allowing the child to wrap his hand around her little finger. It seemed to give him confidence, and he smacked down on his wet nurse’s tit and gave an impression of concentration. Grace and Bess both laughed.

“Bess, I have a favor to ask,” Grace said when they moved away and allowed the surrogate mothers to do their job.

“Another?” Bess teased, smiling mischievously. “What is it now, sister?”

“Katherine Gordon has been given leave to visit her husband and has asked that I accompany her,” she began and paused, waiting for an immediate refusal. When it did not come, she persevered, although she saw Bess’s face flush pink. “I did not think I wanted to go, but I can now. Certes, I would not do this without your permission, Bess.” She was not ready to admit to the queen—and thus Henry—that she had been wrong all these years. Henry did not deserve it.

Bess walked to the door and Grace’s heart sank. She should never have approached the queen before she was fully recovered and churched.

“May I trust you, Grace?” Bess asked softly without turning back. “May I trust that you will not attempt to help the man escape?”

Grace gripped the sides of her gown, sweat breaking out on her upper lip. Did Henry know she had helped at Westminster? Had Perkin confessed after being tortured so horribly?

“H-help him escape?” Grace stammered, hoping she sounded shocked. “How could I do that, your grace? He is locked in the Tower of London, the strongest fortress in all of England.”

Bess looked back over her shoulder at Grace’s cocked head and guileless brown eyes. “Aye, Grace, you may go,” she said simply. “I will always be in your debt for the service you gave my mother.” Without another word, she left the room.

I
N MID
-M
AY, AFTER
Grace’s churching, she and Katherine left Greenwich one morning in a small barge with Edgar and Bess’s earnest young secretary, Geoffrey, and an escort of three of the queen’s yeomen. Both women were quiet during the hour-long journey on a mounting tide, contemplating the impending visit. Grace was remembering Tom’s admonition to her upon hearing of the plan: “Do not do or say anything foolish. The king will be watching you.” They had been strolling up the hill behind the palace to the ivy-covered castle tower, built earlier in the century by Duke Humphrey of Gloucester. They could look up the river to the spires of London from the top of it, and it was one of Grace’s favorite places to visit when the weather was fine, as it was that day, when flocks of twittering birds flew overhead and the grassy hillside was filled with the snowy blossoms of hawthorn and the brilliant yellow of broom. She smiled to herself now, when she recalled how she’d answered Tom. She had caught him unawares and tripped up his lanky six-foot frame, which sent him rolling several feet down the hill. Then she pounced on him and tickled his chest mercilessly with her chin, making him writhe and laugh at the same time. She had discovered this vulnerability early in their lovemaking, and she adored the way he could not control his laughter when she attacked him.

“Stop! I beg of you, stop!” he cried between breaths, and catching her wrists in his big hands, he flipped her over onto her back as if he were playing with a puppy. “Ah, now I have you, wench!” he cried, and proceeded to cover her face and neck with kisses.

It was her turn to laugh and tell him to stop, and soon articles of clothing were strewn about them and with Grace in nothing but her petticoat and Tom in his shirt and hose, they came together for the first time since Grace went to Hellowe for Christmas. She could feel a hard clump of earth digging into her back, which caused her to arch up, unwittingly bringing herself even more pleasure. A speckled songthrush repeated its musical warble on a hawthorn bough as if inspired by the sensuous sounds from
below. Then they had lain on their backs, delighting in the warmth of the sun on their bare torsos.